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5 Goofy Versions of Spider-Man You Might Not Know About

There have been some crazy shake-ups in the Spider-Man storyline recently, what with Doctor Octopus taking over his body in The Superior Spider-Man. But that’s far from the goofiest change that’s happened in Spider-Man’s life; we’ve got five right here:

1) Spider-Hulk

via herodistrict.com

This was actually the second Spider-Man comic book I ever bought.

Basically, Spidey gets a dose of gamma radiation and becomes just like The Incredible Hulk, only in a torn Spider-Man costume. At the time, I went to my dad and said, “Hey, is Spider-Man supposed to be The Hulk, or what? ‘Cause this comic says so.” And my dad said, “Son, that’s the stupidest thing I ever heard.”

He was right.

2) Cosmic Spidey

via tumblr.com

Here’s what I like about Spider-Man:

- Cool costume
- He swings from webs
- Despite his powers, he’s still very vulnerable
- He beats stronger foes using cleverness and guile

At one point, Marvel thought they’d just neatly remove all that interesting stuff and make him omnipotent for some reason. For awhile, actually. The stories went like this:

Spidey flew around and met up with all his old villains and it went like this: “Oh wow, Doctor Octopus. Ah! You caught me in your metal arms. Did I tell you I can split atoms by looking at them now? PEACE!” or, “Oh hey, look it’s the Vulture, an old guy with wings who can fly. I can breathe in space now, what do you think of that? PEACE!”

Oh man… as you can guess, these were riveting, suspenseful stories.

3) Non-powered Spidey

via spiderman.erictoribio.com

Marvel was so proud of its dumb “Spidey has the powers of a god” storyline, it decided to re-hash it by going in the opposite direction.

Out of nowhere, Peter Parker reasons: “Yeah, great power, great responsibility… but what if… I had no power? Then I’d have no responsibility! No more bills for this guy!”

So he proceeds to get one of his villains (in fairness, he doesn’t know this at the time) to take away his powers. Then as soon as trouble happens, he’s like, “Ah yeah, it was actually really sweet when I could do something about this constant trouble I get into every day.” And then he spends the rest of the arc getting his ass kicked by B-level villains like the Tarantula.

via oocities.org

4) Alternate ID Spidey

This actually had potential to be cool. On the run from the law, but still compelled to fight crime, Spider-Man took on a series of alternate identities. Very neat idea. In execution? Not so much. Let’s look at the fresh new characters he invented:

Ricochet

via forums.comicbookresources.com

No webs, leather jacket, white hair, rubber discs to throw around. F.

Prodigy

via gianttitp.com

Ridiculous. I never thought I’d see a costume worse than Thor, but there it is. F minus.

Hornet

via kotaku.com.au

Iron Man-wannabe MINUS ANYTHING COOL OR POWERFUL. G.

Dusk

via marvel.com

Admittedly, Dusk was awesome, but come on… it was just an all black costume. Put a logo on it or something, jeez. C.

5) Spider-Ham

via malottpro.deviantart.com

An alternate reality version of Spider-Man that is a wise-cracking pig. Unfortunately, these storylines were also written in an alternate dimension where the writers might have been considered funny. In our reality? Not so much.

For the record, I’m not just a hater, there have also been some awesome versions of Spidey, such as this guy:

via deviantart.com

And… damn it, I know my irrational love of the clone storyline will burn any credibility I had with this article, buuuuuuuuuuuuut THIS GUY: